Tension or tense?

Salvation from sin has three tenses: I have been saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in trying to obey God that I forget the first and third tense and just become tense.

Yesterday’s verses about abiding in Christ put me on alert. I tried. It wasn’t happening. I woke up this morning feeling like I didn’t have a clue what it means to be a spiritual person. Today’s verse was not much help, at first. It is from Revelation 22 and says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.”

My present tense mode had me thinking that washing my robes meant keeping short accounts with God, keeping my life clean. But that phrase had an asterisk beside it so I did a little digging. Most translations say it this way: “Blessed are those who do His commandments . . .” which only reinforced my first thoughts. More tension, not that I believe a person has to work hard to get into the heavenly city, but at this point, working hard was on my mind.

So I kept digging. I checked my Greek dictionary, a handy item when I get confused. It said that the word used for “wash their robes” or “do His commandments” is in that Greek verb tense that means “do it once and it is done.”

Sometimes I wonder why parts of the Bible are written with less clarity than other parts, but this morning I understood that God wanted me to dig a bit, to get my mind off my lousy performance and remember what actually does give me the right to the tree of life. It is not that effort of ‘working out my salvation’ nor is it a future, pie-in-the-sky hope that I’ll someday be okay. It is that first tense: I have been saved.

Jesus said that the “work of God is to believe on the One He has sent.” When I put my faith in Christ, God forgave my sin and washed it away, giving me a “robe of righteousness” (the righteousness of Christ) that is none of my doing. That is done, finished. My robe is washed and clean and never gets dirty because it is His righteousness, not mine, that covers me and gives me the right to the tree of life and to enter His heavenly city.

I already have accessed that tree. The Bible says, “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.”

God amazes me. He uses a verb tense to remind me that I already have what I am trying so hard to live out. His life is my life, now. With that, He relieves my tension.